


Sunlight on a Ripened Grain

by Chibiness87



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Feels, F/M, major character death but not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25597309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibiness87/pseuds/Chibiness87
Summary: Five times Buffy Summers dies, and one time she doesn't.
Relationships: Angel/Buffy Summers (past), Spike/Buffy Summers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	Sunlight on a Ripened Grain

**Author's Note:**

> I… did a thing. I re-watched Buffy. And by that, I mean I watched the entire series in about 2 weeks, despite working a full time job. And then I told myself I was not going to write any more fics while I had outstanding work for actual work to do, and then I wrote this anyway. It’s not beta’d, and it has been about 18 years since I first wrote any Buffy fanfic. Hopefully I’ve moved on a bit in my ability to write something coherent since then.

**Sunlight on ripened grain** by **chibiness87**  
**Rating** : K  
**Spoilers** : Everything up to Chosen BtVS 7.22, slight AU from AtS season 5 and mainly ignores the comics  
**Pairings** : Buffy/Spike (canonical Buffy/Angel mentioned)  
**Disclaimer** : Joss and Mutant Enemy own the characters. Mary Elizabeth Frye owns the poem from which the title and extracts come from. I own my spin on their combined worlds. No infringement intended.

* * *

_Do not stand at my grave and weep_

_I am not there; I do not sleep._

* * *

The first time she dies doesn’t count.

Not really. Not in any way that matters. One second she’s being bitten by the Master, and the next she’s clawing her way out of her grave as one of her worst nightmares. Because that’s the stitch right now. Nightmares coming to life. Which, yeah, wigsome, but at least she has some sort of idea as to what’s going on. (A bit.)

And hey, at least it’s _this_ nightmare, and not one of her Slayer dreams, which, sure, sometimes have a habit of coming sorta true anyway, and wow is that thought nowhere near as comfortable as she’d hoped.

The rules of this vampmare are a little vague; for instance, she has no idea if she can still, y’know, actually walk in daylight, so she plays it safe and keeps to the shadows. There’s a safety in the darkness, one she’s only just beginning to appreciate, when everything goes back to normal once a kid wakes up.

One day, she might get used to the weirdness living on a Hellmouth has brought to her life.

One day.

Maybe.

She hopes.

* * *

The second time she dies, she doesn’t think it counts.

Okay, sure, she drowned. A bit. But then Xander showed up and did the whole mouth-to-mouth thing and it’s all fine and dandy and she’s perfectly happy not thinking about the fact she was, y’know, _Dead (with a capital D)_ , until another slayer shows up. One with a handbook and a mission and all sorts of bondy-ness with _her_ Watcher, which just isn't fair.

And then there’s a whole thing with her kinda-sorta-boyfriend getting almost sorta dead by both the new slayer and the new vamp in town (who does not make her girly bits sit up and pay attention.

At all.

Not even a little bit.)

And hey, she’s just dropped a whole organ on him with a single throw of some sort of incense burner thing, which is majorly cool in _her_ book, so hopefully she won’t have to think about him again.

Not that she spent any time thinking about him before.

Except, y’know, ways to kill him.

And did she mention she just dropped an organ on him?

So okay, there’s two Slayers now, but at least that means she’ll be able to stay in one place and not have to move anytime soon.

As long as she doesn’t get kicked out.

* * *

The third time she dies, she runs away.

Her mother doesn’t want anything to do with her, (and she’s trying to see it as an improvement to wanting to commit her, but it’s hard,) her boyfriend turned lover turned evil vampire turned back to being cursed is dead (or as dead as being sucked into a hell dimension can make you), and the only other person in this whole entire world who seems to want anything to do with her just ran off to who knows where with his ho-bag of a Slayer killing girlfriend.

Suffice to say, she’s not having a good day.

Scratch that.

She’s not having a good year. She’d quite like to go back a few months, back to where the big bad in town was some vampire wanting to cure his girlfriend, and not her very-quickly-ex-boyfriend trying to suck the world into hell.

But time travel being resigned to the movies, she decides to quit while she’s alive, and so she moves to LA, kills the name Buffy, kills the sacred duty Slayer part of her life, and reinvents herself.

It’s not easy, but she’s beginning to realise nothing in life really is, but it takes a trip to her own hell dimension to come to terms with just who she really is.

This time, her resurrection is of her own making, and she makes sure she owns it.

* * *

The fourth time she dies, she’s done.

Her mother is dead and her love life is dead and the only person who seems to be able to accept her for who she is completely, without any faults, is an evil soulless vampire, and really, what does that say about her?

Her life is one big lie after another, and yeah, some of that is because some monks made it so, but some of that is her own making too. Pretending everything is okay. Pretending she has even a single idea what to do, what to say. Sometimes simply putting one foot in front of another is too much to even consider, and yet everyone keeps expecting her to do so.

Everyone, that is, except Spike.

Spike, who made a robot because he couldn’t have her. Spike, who almost died to protect Dawn.

Spike, who is in love with her.

But yet, it’s Spike who did what none of her friends offered to do and take her and Dawn away. Spike who didn’t pitch a fit when she said they were running. Spike who gave Willow the idea she needed to snap her out of her catatonic state when everything got too much.

Falling through the portal, she knows she is dying, can feel her blood sealing the doors behind her, knows her death will hit him the hardest and wishes she could spare him that, but yet she finally feels at peace.

(She should have known it wouldn’t last.)

* * *

The fifth time she dies, Spike dies too.

There is nothing left of the town she has called home for most of the past seven years. No school, no Bronze, even the mall has gone. And all because she gave an amulet to the one person she trusted more than any other.

A champion.

 _Her_ champion.

They drive away from the crater, and with every mile she feels another part of her shut down. Another part of her lost. Because Spike gave her everything she could ever need that night he came looking for her, and she was too scared to take it. Too scared to latch on with everything in her and never let him go.

He didn’t believe her when she told him she loved him, and now she’ll never get the chance to make him believe it wasn’t just a pity line at the end of the world when they both knew he was dying.

She moves halfway around the world in an attempt to bring herself back to life. Tries dating someone called the Immortal, but he’s so full of himself she can’t help think back to the one person she wants more than ever (still, months later, she wants Spike) that she gives up after one date.

She’ll live on in this half-life she has. Not dead, but not exactly living either.

She hopes Spike can forgive her that.

* * *

The first time she comes back to life, Spike is on the other side of her door.

Just standing there, duster and docs and jeans, smelling like leather and cigarettes and _Spike_ , biting his lip and tilting his head in that way that haunts her nightmares and floods her dreams. His eyes are a shade of blue she thought she’d forgotten, and how crazy is that, to think she could forget something so vital as the colour of his eyes.

She hits him.

Punches his head, her fist connecting with his jaw, and it hits her then that oh god, he’s real. He’s real and here and then she’s gasping and crying, heart hammering in her chest and she’s not dead which means, oh god, he’s not dead, and she can’t she can’t…

“Slayer,” he says, in that voice of his, deep and soft and concerned, gravelly, like honey over molasses, only not, something else, something that she actually knows what it means, but then she’s gasping his name, moaning it on air, and he takes a step forward into her home and she would ask how that’s possible but he’s kissing her, kissing her like he’s been thinking about kissing her for the past day week months, the same way she’s been thinking about kissing him for the past week months year, and she thinks if she dies now it’ll be the happiest she’s ever been.

And then he does that thing with his tongue, and she doesn’t think of anything for a very long time.

* * *

_Do not stand by my grave and cry_

_I am not there. I do not die._

* * *

End

Thoughts?


End file.
